NEWS

ThinkCyte completes seed financing

ThinkCyte, Inc., a company focusing on developing a high-throughput imaging-activated cell sorting system, today announced the completion of a US$3.2 million (JPY 350 million) seed-financing round.

ThinkCyte’s novel Ghost Cytometry™ method uses a proprietary combination of ghost motion imaging, microfluidics, and machine-learning to image and sort single-cells. It is of use in a variety of medical, research, and therapeutic applications, such as identifying and extracting circulating tumor cells in peripheral blood.

To date, the ThinkCyte has raised more than $5 million (JPY 550 million) including angel investments and grants. This round of financing includednew investors, Real Tech Fund, Japan Science & Technology Agency (JST) and Osaka University Venture Capital.

This round of seed funding will accelerate ThinkCyte’s product and application development efforts. The company’s proprietary Ghost Cytometry method, and commercialization of an imaging-activated cell sorting system based on the technology has the potential to transforms single cell research, cell therapy and other clinical applications.

ABOUT GHOST CYTOMETRY™
Imaging flow analyzers are a valuable tool used to detect and analyze single cells in fields as diverse as oncology, immunology, and drug screening.

ThinkCyte’s proprietary Ghost Cytometry system integrates compressive imaging, flow cytometry, microfluidics, and machine learning algorithms to achieves the trifecta of single-cell analysis: high content, ultrahigh throughput, and selective, morphology-based cell sorting in one instrument. Investors have agreed and the company is in scaling production of the novel instrument.

“We invented Ghost Cytometry to fundamentally change the nature and definition of cell sorting. Now we are in product development to deliver this system to customers,” said Waichiro Katsuda, Chief Executive Officer andthe co-founder of ThinkCyte, Inc. “Our technology has the potential to uncover hidden crucial information in cell images that could lead to new scientific findings, treatments and diagnostics. The proceeds from this financing will accelerate commercialization of our new system.”

The company developed the Ghost Cytometry™ technology, the world’s first high-throughput fluorescent image-based cell sorting system. ThinkCyte was founded by leading experts in applied physics, optics, bioengineering and machine learning with a mission to advance single-cell analysis for research, diagnostics, and therapeutics with an integrated multidisciplinary approach.